An Emergent Rebellion

This article is about how Elsa, a young Sámi girl in Ann-Helén Laestadius’ Stolen, learns to resist hate crimes that seek to sever her roots in traditional Indigenous herding practices. The nine-year old Elsa witnesses the killing of her personal reindeer and is threatened into a decade-long silence by the killer. There are more attacks which we read as the violent enforcement of western linear time on traditional seasonal herding cycles. The novel charts Elsa’s coming-of-age as a rebel able to seek retribution not just for herself and her reindeer but also to fight for a vital future for her culture. We read Stolen together with “revolutionary theory” to show how imposed settler temporality is harmful to sustainable modes of living. We emphasise a range of eco-activist responses to the novel, among them rebel reading itself as one of several forms of political engagement available for the eco-rebel. We consider teaching Stolen at secondary school level focusing on how readers can practice risk-taking engagement with a text while learning “how to read our world now” in solidarity with Elsa’s struggle for her people’s survival within an ecologically and socially just future for all. Ultimately, Elsa’s emergent rebellion suggests forms of activism based on a commitment to ancestry, especially its future

Coming out · Media studies · Sociology · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Gender Studies · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Themes in Literature Analysis

• Indigenous Climate Change Studies

  Kyle Powys Whyte, Kyle Whyte•English Language Notes•2017

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• The Activist Humanist

  C Levine•Activist Humanist•2023

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• Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native

  Patrick Wolfe•Journal of Genocide Research•2006

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• Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene

  Open Access•Kyle Powys Whyte•Environment and Planning E Nature…•2018

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• An Active Measure

  Allison Hedge Coke•World Literature Today•2019

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• Poetry as Field

  Jake Skeets•World Literature Today•2019

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• Reshaping the University

  R Kuokkanen•Reshaping the University•2008

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